Siichaq is on the rise

Photography by Will Karim Opening yourself up to vulnerability can feel a little like piercing your own heart with a blade. Whether you’re lost in conversation with a friend, or pouring your heart out on stage in front of thousands of hungry faces, you’re reaching deep within and accessing some hidden part of yourself. It’s hardcore, revealing, occasionally embarrassing, and demanded of us every day. After years of practice, you’d think it’d start to come easy, but often, as the Atlanta-based rock musician Kenie Mason – better known by her Inuit name Siichaq – says, it’s not something intuitive. “Vulnerability is a practice, not a destination. It’s very intentional. Every time it takes effort and thought,” she says. This trading of armoured walls for an open door, Siichaq says, is a conscious choice you should choose to make every moment you possibly can.Calling from her sun-soaked home Georgia home, Mason sits beside her little orange cat Pumpkin, both of them basking in the afternoon light, relatively unbothered by the barking of the “shelter-special” Fender, whose name Mason openly questions. (“Wait, is that corny?” she laughs.) Her animals, appropriately, are close to her heart...